The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood. Within

three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the

household. Clay’s hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a

wonder. The family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they

could have been with a fortune. It was well that Mrs. Hawkins held the

purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while.

It took but a trifle to pay Hawkins’s outstanding obligations, for he had

always had a horror of debt.

When Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of

his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father’s

family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe

at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a

free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had

broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him.

The younger children were born and educated dependents. They had never

been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur

to them to make an attempt now.

The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any

circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood;

and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household

to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the

suspicion of being a lunatic.

CHAPTER VII.

Via, Pecunia! when she’s run and gone

And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again

With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead!

While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer,

I’ll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs,

Dust, but I’ll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells,

Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones,

To make her come!

B. Jonson.

Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of

Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town

admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it

got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then–till it

came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again

and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct

marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those

days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and

always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into

action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and

pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented

in the pictures–but these illusions vanished when later years brought

their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but

a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that

the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic “rough,” when he is out of the

pictures.

Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a

perfectly triumphant ostentation–which was natural and proper, for

Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington,

very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to

proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came

down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said:

“Lord bless you–I’m glad to see you, Washington–perfectly delighted to

see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the look-out for you.

Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn’t shake off–man that’s

got an enormous thing on hand–wants me to put some capital into it–and

I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now,

let that luggage alone; I’ll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do?

All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington.

Lord I’m glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to

look at you. Bless you, they won’t know you, you’ve grown so. Folks all

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